Introducing Rocky!

Rocky is a male Coon hound mix dog. We got him at a shelter when we were originally looking at another dog. He was super quiet in his kennel, but my mother noticed him almost instantly. She wanted to see him out of his kennel, so we got the manager to take him out. When he was taken out, he got so excited with all the attention that he had an accident! He must have been cooped up in that kennel for a while.

We decided to take him outside to the fenced-in yard to interact with him for a bit before leaving. We brought out some toys to play with, and headed out. I wanted to see if he would fetch the toys if I threw them for him. So when I chucked one of the toys into the air, he bolted. I never saw a dog go that crazy after a toy! I figured that he wouldn’t be able to find it in that mess of overgrown weeds and grass, but he trotted around sniffing it out and he even did a little point pose with his foot when he caught the scent. (Hence our guess of him being a type of hound) I also thought with all the excitement, he would take off with his reward right away, but instead he came right back and then played a bit of tug of war with me.

My family decided to take him with us that day, and we named him Rocky.

After having him settle in at our home, we noticed that he was starting to lose weight. We were feeding him extra food to see if he would gain weight, and he scarfed it down without hesitation. But still he lost weight. We weren’t sure what was wrong, so we brought him to the vet. I’m not sure what the vet said, but I think it had something to do with worms. The medicine he got helped him lots, and he was back to his old self in no time.

When you look at Rocky now, you could probably only tell that he was a shelter dog because of his constant pacing. We try to give him enough attention, but his pacing will not stop. I think he also has separation anxiety because each time we leave and come back, he gets all worked up and won’t let us leave without jumping at us or on us. He goes in hyper mode with his pacing when he sees us drive or walk down the driveway. He also has aggression towards any other animal, and stranger. He doesn’t show any aggression towards people unless he doesn’t know them, or they abuse him. For example: teasing, poking, and grabbing his favorite toy away. He also doesn’t like any animal around his food. He’ll growl and snarl at them if they get within a few feet from his food, but won’t have any reaction to humans! I even tried putting my hand right under his mouth while he was eating once, and nothing! He just ignored it and kept chewing.

Other than those problems, Rocky is a very obedient dog, and has great agility talent. (Even though he was probably never trained) We had problems with walking him at first, but after using a cool technique I thought up, he was super calm. I trained him over a week of walking, so it was pretty clear that he was a fast learner. He wasn’t taught many tricks other than sit though. His only problem with walking is when another dog comes around. I solved this by putting him on the other side of me while walking and he picked up on this pretty quickly. I guess he thinks that my safety is more important than defending his territory, so he won’t go through me to get to another dog.

He ended up being my dog because my other siblings didn’t want to deal with his aggression and over-excitement, so I ended up claiming him. He really is such a sweet dog to be around, but I still need to work on him.